INTER ACTIONS
D e p a rt m ent
of
Physics
2012
The Universe in a Computer
Anonymous Donors
Establish Physics
Undergraduate
Enrichment Fund
Computational cosmology has advanced considerably in four
decades, starting with simulations having only a few thousand
particles interacting gravitationally to state-of-the-art simulations
with tens of billions of resolution elements having several different
types of interactions. To put the universe in a computer, we
have to solve the physics of gravitation, fluid dynamics and
A Carnegie Mellon family, in recognition
radiative transfer to model the evolution of dark matter, gas, stars,
of the quality of their student’s physics
education, has established a fund to
support undergraduate activities
black holes and radiation. Interesting microphysics, some well
Hy Trac
understood (e.g., atomic transitions), others still unknown (e.g.,
star formation), can also be included. Furthermore, the physics
are solved in an expanding space-time. In general, the expansion could slow down due to
beyond the classroom. This fund
the attractive force of gravity or speed up due to some mysterious repulsive force, which
will allow the Department of Physics
we call dark energy.
to employ more undergraduates in
Many specialized algorithms have
research-related positions and will
been developed and applied for
support other undergraduate activities,
cosmological simulations. For example,
there are N-body methods for collision-
such as student clubs and events and
less dark matter dynamics, grid-based
travel to physics conferences. Our
Eulerian or particle-based Lagrangian
generous donors hope that this fund
will inspire giving by other friends of
schemes for collisional gas dynamics,
and raytracing techniques for radiative
transfer. Numerical modeling has also
the department who are interested in
benefited from the rapid development
enriching the undergraduate experience.
in supercomputing technology and
If you would like to contribute to this
fund, please include the designation
“Physics Undergraduate Enrichment”
capability. Together, these advancements
enable increasingly larger and more
realistic simulations to be run and studied.
My research in cosmology and
when making your gift to Carnegie
astrophysics often incorporates
Mellon. General donations to the
supercomputing simulations. Starting
department without this designation
in graduate school at the University of
A visualization of cosmic reionization in a
hydrodynamic + radiative transfer simulation.
Early generation of stars and galaxies produce
ultraviolet radiation that dissociate electrons
from the neutral hydrogen gas in the universe.
Toronto, and during my post doctorates
will be used to support undergraduate
at Princeton and Harvard, I have developed and applied my own N-body, Eulerian hydro
and graduate programs.
and raytracing radiative transfer codes to simulate how structures form and evolve in the
expanding universe. I am particularly interested in complex problems involving the gas,
stars, galaxies and clusters of galaxies that provide the color for our picture of the cosmos.
continued on page 2
continued from page 1
Simulating Cosmic Reionization
One continuing project I work on involves
using simulations to understand the
process of cosmic reionization, which is
now a frontier topic in cosmology with
vast scientific richness for theoretical and
observational exploration. What uniquely
marks the epoch of reionization (EoR) is the
emergence of the first luminous sources:
stars, galaxies and quasars. It is possibly
the only time that these objects directly alter
the state of the entire universe. Ultraviolet
radiation from the sources is energetic
enough to dissociate electrons from neutral
hydrogen atoms, converting the cold and
neutral primordial gas into a warm and
highly ionized one. Consequently, this
impacts the formation of later generations
of galaxies. The distant observational
signals have the promising potential to
not only tell us how the first generation of
stars and galaxies formed, but also provide
strong constraints on the fundamental
parameters of the cosmological model. With
collaborators, we have already shown that
the imprints of reionization, in particular in
the gas density and temperature fields, are
different than previously assumed, and can
potentially be observed in quasar spectra
from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).
Discovering Galaxy Clusters
Galaxies are not randomly distributed in the
universe, but rather they are generally found
close to one another. Galaxies also collect
in pairs, triplets and even in the hundreds
or thousands. Galaxy clusters situated in
massive dark matter halos are the largest
gravitational bound systems in the universe.
The largest known system has a mass
over 1,015 times the mass of our sun, and
over 1,000 times the mass of our galaxy.
For decades, astronomers have tried to
count the number of clusters as a function
of mass and time, for their abundance can
reveal how much dark matter and dark
energy exist in the universe. One modern
way of detecting clusters is through the
Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect, a distortion in
the temperature of the cosmic microwave
background (CMB) radiation as the photons
get scattered by hot intracluster gas.
I am a member of the science team for the
Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT)
project, which uses a 6-meter primary mirror
telescope to observe at three frequency
channels. We have detected galaxy clusters
in CMB maps and have already started
placing constraints on parameters of the
cosmological model. Many more new
clusters will be discovered over the next
few years of operation.
In the Works
With the start of the Petascale (1,015
operations per second) computing era,
comes a renewed emphasis on code
development. I have started a new project
to develop a state-of-the-art cosmological
code that combines the advantages of
moving-mesh (MM) and adaptive mesh
refinement (AMR) algorithms. In the
traditional MM approach, an initial Cartesian
mesh is continuously deformed to improve
dynamic range where and when the action
takes place. With the addition of AMR,
a hierarchy of refinement meshes and
moving-meshes allow unlimited dynamic
range in principle. It is an exciting time
for computational cosmology, and I hope
to share that with the current and future
generations of students and postdocs.
From the Department Head
I am proud to announce that three new
assistant professors have joined our
department since the last edition of
Interactions. These include Prof. Hy
Trac, formerly a Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics researcher,
who joined us last year; you can read
about his research activities in this
Gregg Franklin
newsletter. Prof. Shirley Ho and Prof.
Rachel Mandelbaum joined us this fall. Before joining us,
Prof. Mandelbaum was a researcher for Princeton University’s
Department of Astrophysical Sciences and Prof. Ho held both
the Chamberlain and Seaborg Fellowships at Berkeley. All
three are now members of the department’s Bruce and Astrid
McWilliams Center for Cosmology.
This edition of Interactions focuses on undergraduate research.
Although we do not require a formal thesis project as part of
our undergraduate degree program, we strongly encourage
our students to participate in research. To help prepare them
for activities outside the classroom, our undergraduates
are introduced to a variety of physics research fields in our
sophomore colloquia series and they see more in-depth
2
presentations during our junior colloquia. To help our students
find research opportunities, Prof. Kunal Ghosh, our Assistant
Head for Undergraduate Affairs, maintains a database of
possible research topics, but many of our aggressive students
just show up in faculty offices hunting for research opportunities.
In some cases, they come with their own ideas for research
initiatives. We find that more than 90% of our students take
advantage of research opportunities and internships by the time
they graduate. To hone their communication skills and share
their research experience with their colleagues, our students
present their work at the department’s annual poster session
held each spring.
Five students have contributed articles on their research to this
newsletter. They include Maxwell Hutchinson, who pursued his
own research idea as a freshman and went on to work on other
computational-related activities throughout his time with us. Matt
Duescher’s ChargeCar research was done with members of the
Robotics Institute. Charles Swanson and Greg Bernero worked
on two different projects involving the detection of cosmic rays
while Jason Rocks pursued theoretical investigations of lipid
membranes properties. This sampling of projects is intended to
show the breadth of challenges taken on by our students.
Calling All Physics Alumni!
As is often the case in other things, Carnegie Mellon alumni are stronger
when they are united. Whether you live in Pittsburgh or on the other side of
the globe, you can stay connected as a member of the Carnegie Mellon
online community. The online community offers alumni and current students
the opportunity to connect with old and new friends, register for events near
you or on campus and network professionally. You may access services
such as email forwarding, which allows you to create a permanent email
address identifying yourself as a CMU alumnus/a. Finally, your participation
will help the Department of Physics stay in touch with you and keep you
posted on department news.
To access the CMU online community, you will need to register and create
an account. (If you had an existing account prior to Nov. 2011, you must
create a new registration.) You will need your 10-digit Personal Identification
Number (PIN), which can be found on the address label of your Carnegie
Mellon Today magazine as well as at the bottom of emails you receive from
the Alumni Association. In November, when the site officially launched, an
email featuring your PIN was also sent to you.
A ccou n t C r eatio n
Follow These Steps:
1. Visit alumni.cmu.edu/registernow
2. Search for your name
3. Select your name in the search results
4. Enter your ten-digit PIN*
5. Create your new password
*Your ten-digit PIN can be found at the
bottom of emails from the university as
well as on your Carnegie Mellon Today
mailing label.
Questions? Contact us at
[email protected].
We want to stay in touch with you, so please take a moment and join your
fellow physics alumni as members of the CMU online community today.
Astronomy Podcasts
During the last year and a half, our astronomy instructor, Diane Turnshek,
has uploaded over a dozen of her astronomy podcasts to the website
365DaysofAstronomy.com. The 365 Days project began in 2009, the
International Year of Astronomy, and has published daily podcasts since
then (a transcript, an audio file and an RSS feed). The podcasters hail from around the globe.
Five times, groups of students from Introductory Astronomy have podcasted on this site under
Diane’s tutelage. The subjects included a discussion of the baloney of 2012 end-of-the-world
scenarios, the questionable value of spectacle in science TV shows, Eastern influence on
astronomy, black holes and the Drake Equation. The topics for Diane’s podcasts range widely—
light (“Astronomy Vacations” and “Stargate Universe and the CMB”), historical (a tribute to CMU
Professor Truman Kohman), political (Congressional Visits Day with the American Astronomical
Society) and educational (“Wonders from Class” series). Her latest is an interview with Dr. Michael
Wood-Vasey (U. Pittsburgh), the new spokesperson for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Feel free
Diane Turnshek
to contact her with ideas and interview subjects for future podcasts.
http://365daysofastronomy.org/
3
Peter Barnes
Peter David Barnes, the founding member
of our medium-energy physics group, died
on March 25 at the age of 73. He is survived
by his wife, Angela, and their children Alexa,
Peter and Diana, eight grandchildren and his
brother Frederick.
In Memorium
Walter James Carr, Jr., Ph.D. (S’50)
After completing his undergraduate work at
Notre Dame, Peter went on to obtain his Ph.D.
from Yale in 1965. Following postdoctoral
fellowship at the Niels Bohr Institute and Los
The Department of Physics lost a distinguished alumnus recently.
Alamos National Laboratory, Peter joined
Walter James (Jim) Carr Jr. (S’50) died at his home in Pittsburgh
our department in 1968.
on November 16, 2010, at age 92. He is survived by his wife,
Winifred W. Carr, nee Schultz (A’48), son James L. Carr (S’78) and
his wife Kathleen Carr (S’77), son Robert D. Carr (S’84, S’87, S’95),
grandchildren Jennifer and Matthew Carr, and his brother
While at Carnegie Mellon, he led his group in
a series of pioneering experiments at the Los
Alamos Meson Physics Facility, the Argonne
B. Edward Carr.
ZGS and the Brookhaven AGS. By the 1980s
After graduating from the Missouri School of Mines and Stanford
of the role of the strange quark in nuclear
University, where he earned a master’s degree in electrical
physics, performing experiments involving
engineering, Dr. Carr was recruited by Westinghouse Electric
strange-quark production using CERN’s
Corporation to work in its research laboratories. While at
antiproton beam (LEAR) and early relativistic
Westinghouse, he expressed a desire to study physics to better
heavy-ion beam at the SPS. Studies of
understand the “why” behind the engineering, and the company
structure of hypernuclei (nuclei with one
agreed to sponsor his graduate studies in the Department
or more strange quarks) and their lifetimes
of Physics at Carnegie Tech. Dr. Carr conducted research in
were performed using kaon beams available
magnetostriction under Prof. Roman Smoluchowski and earned
at the AGS.
his Ph.D. in physics in 1950.
and ’90s, the group specialized in studies
In 1991, Peter left the department to become
During his 44-year career with Westinghouse, Dr. Carr published
director of the Los Alamos Meson Physics
63 papers and was awarded 13 patents. In recognition of his
Facility and director of the MP Division. He
contributions to theories of magnetism and for development of the
served as director of the Physics Division at
theory of alternating current losses in composite superconductors,
Los Alamos from 1993 to 2000. During this
the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers elevated him to
period, Peter maintained an active research
the grade of IEEE Fellow in 1987. He also became a Fellow of the
program that covered a broad spectrum of
American Physical Society.
activities, contributing to the efforts of the
Our Department of Physics takes pride in Dr. Carr’s distinguished
MINOS, CDMS and PHENIX collaborations.
contribution to industrial research. In recognition of his passion
Throughout his years in leadership positions,
for both physics and research, Dr. Carr’s family has established
Peter combined his insights with his physics
the W. James Carr Jr., Ph.D., MCS 1950, Memorial Undergraduate
and management skills to serve the nuclear
Research Fund at Carnegie Mellon. This endowed fund will
physics community. His work as chair of
provide Small Undergraduate Research Grants (SURG) to
the 1984 DOE panel on the future of electron
students pursuing research projects in physics.
scattering helped define the foundation of
what is now the Thomas Jefferson National
Laboratories.
4
2010-11 Faculty News Briefs
Educational Outreach to Rwanda
“That had better not be a brain!” My
husband had developed a reputation for
bringing home partially-dissected animal
parts from his Anatomy and Physiology
class and storing them in Styrofoam
takeout containers in our refrigerator. He
smiled as he opened the takeout box in
his hands and offered me an onion ring.
Two months earlier, Bertin had come
home from class with a sheep brain. As
we sat together at the kitchen table, he
cut into it and consulted his notes. He
made a casual comment about sheep:
in his native country of Rwanda, sheep
kabobs were a popular meal. Why didn’t
teachers use leftover parts, like the brain,
to teach anatomy? He had taken biology
in Rwanda and had studied the parts
of the brain, but he had never actually
seen one.
Rwanda is a small, developing nation
in East Africa. High school teachers
lack supplies of all kinds: books, lab
equipment and sometimes even chalk.
To add to the teachers’ difficulties, the
public school system recently switched
the language required for classroom
container and sent them for a six-week
to Rwanda to carry out similar training
journey by sea to Rwanda’s Ministry of
sessions in more remote parts of the
Education.
country where the need is even greater.
instruction. Teachers are now required to
In May, we traveled with our team to
deliver all lessons in English, yet many
Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city, where the
classrooms have only a single copy of
Ministry of Education arranged for me
a textbook that is written in French. As
to train 79 science teachers. During the
Bertin and I talked about these problems,
training session, I showed teachers how
an idea formed: we could go to Rwanda
to create lecture demonstrations using
and train teachers to build low-cost
the things that they have around them. I
teaching supplies by utilizing the things
began my lesson by holding up an egg
that are readily available. In addition,
and explaining that this inexpensive item
we could collect textbook donations that
could be used to teach a key concept in
teachers could use as a reference as
each subject area: osmosis in biology,
they prepared their lessons.
emulsion chemistry, impulse in physics
Bertin and I assembled a small team
of volunteers who contacted local
universities, high schools and publishing
companies. Textbooks poured in,
and volume in mathematics. With my
guidance, teachers went on to develop
their own lecture demonstrations using
the things that they had on hand.
Donations for our book drive continue to
arrive and our garage is again becoming
a science reference library to rival the
E&S Library in Wean Hall. We hope to
soon be able to send a second shipment
of books to Rwanda, with the end goal
of supplying every biology, chemistry,
physics and mathematics teacher in the
country with a textbook of their own.
Special thanks to the Provost’s Office,
the MCS Dean’s Office, the CIT Dean’s
Office and Allison Park Church for their
financial contributions toward the cost of
shipping. If you’d like more information
including many from CMU physics
Our teacher training session and textbook
about how you can help science teachers
faculty. We loaded the 4,500 donated
donation was met with overwhelming
in Rwanda, please contact Michelle Hicks
textbooks into a 20 foot shipping
gratitude, and Bertin and I wish to return
Ntampaka at [email protected].
5
Visitors to campus, as well as current students, may be treated to an impressive
display of antique scientific instrumentation for research and teaching, which has
been compared favorably to displays in the Smithsonian Institution. But unless
they are taking physics classes, or touring the undergraduate physics laboratories,
they may have to go out of their way to find it. 2012 marks the 10th anniversary
of the Victor M. Bearg Physics Museum, located near the undergraduate physics
laboratories, on the A-level of Doherty Hall. Made possible by the generosity of
Victor M. Bearg (S’64), and curated by Barry Luokkala (S’01), the museum features
original laboratory furniture and equipment used by the very first students at the
Carnegie Technical Schools, as well as photographs of the undergraduate physics
Victor Bearg Museum
Anniversary
laboratories as they appeared in the
early 1900s. Displays are arranged by
topic, and include the measurement
of basic physical quantities (length, mass, temperature, pressure),
light and optics, electricity and magnetism, and atomic physics. One
exhibit shows the gradual evolution of instrumentation for measuring current and
voltage, beginning with simple d’Arsonval analog meter movements from the late
19th century, and progressing to modern digital multimeters.
A favorite item, which is frequently removed from the display for use
as a classroom demonstration, is an important artifact from the history
of modern physics. The famous Stern-Gerlach experiment provided
the first direct experimental evidence that the spatial orientation of
the magnetic moment of an atom is quantized. Originally performed
in the early 1920s, the experiment involved passing a beam of atoms
through a highly non-uniform magnetic field. The pole tips of the
Stern-Gerlach magnet found their way here, when Otto Stern and
his associate, Immanuel Estermann, came to Carnegie Tech at the
invitation of President Baker in 1933. Stern, who received the Nobel
Prize in Physics in 1940, remained at Carnegie Tech for a relatively
short time. Estermann, however enjoyed an extended career here.
One of his graduate students, Simeon Friedberg (S’51) later became
head of the physics department. The original Stern-Gerlach magnet
pole tips were preserved in Professor Friedberg’s office until his
retirement, when they became part of our museum display, along with
a number of antique optical instruments from Professor Friedberg’s
personal collection, donated by his family.
The museum also features a collection of memorabilia from
NASA’s Ranger Project, donated by another of our alumni, Joseph
Staniszewski (S’50). Mr. Staniszewski designed the video camera
system flown on the Ranger probes, which were a prelude to the Apollo program.
Along with the original prototype video camera and power unit, the display also
includes original footage transmitted by the Ranger’s video cameras, during the last
couple of minutes before the probe (intentionally) crashed into the lunar surface.
The film was converted to DVD, which plays continuously in the museum display.
The Victor Bearg Physics Museum is open at all hours when
Doherty Hall is open, and admission is free.
6
U nder g raduate R e s earch
While at Carnegie Mellon, I was constantly
functionals on other problems that would have been prohibitively
engaged in research. Freshman year, I
expensive to run on the CPU. For more information, see
had a SURF with Prof. Franklin to simulate
arXiv:1111.0716.
and design an idea for an electromagnetic
linear accelerator. Sophomore year, I
worked at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing
Editor’s note: Maxwell Hutchinson graduated in May 2011, and is
currently pursuing a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago.
Center (PSC), which is connected to
CMU through the physics department,
My undergraduate research was for the
on a number of computational physics
Maxwell Hutchinson
ChargeCar project, headed by Professor
codes. Junior year, I began working with
Illah Nourbakhsh and Gregg Podnar.
Prof. Widom on quasicrystals, boron and
The purpose of ChargeCar is to design
density functional theory (DFT), and am still involved in those
affordable conversions of cars with internal
efforts. Senior year, in addition to the work with Prof. Widom, I
combustion engines into plug-in electric
studied Ising models with Prof. Swendsen and two fellow students,
commuter vehicles through the intelligent
Robert Lee and Karpur Shukla. We’ve had much better luck with
use of existing technologies. Although
quasicrystals and DFT methods applied to boron, so let me tell you
the project lives under the banner of the
a little bit about them.
Quasicrystals are solid structures that lie somewhere between
glasses (amorphous) and crystals (periodic) in that they lack
translational periodicity, but maintain rotational symmetries
and other long range order. Their experimental discovery
by Dan Shechtman won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
As physicists, we strive to find some simple model of the
quasicrystal structure, with the “random tiling model” being the
most popular. In this model, the structure is represented by a
space-filling, non-overlapping tiling. Our challenge is, given a
set of tiles and a polygon, to count the number of ways to tile the
polygon. The solution, in terms of the characteristic length of the
polygon, grows super-exponentially. We focused on octagonal
regions, and edge-length 5 was the previous largest result
(296755610108278480324496). We were able to use 1TB of
shared memory for three weeks on the Blacklight supercomputer
at the PSC to solve the problem through edge-length 8 (1195803
0460032216692321999491102528884665618728333544765499
25).
The full sequence can be found on the Online Encyclopedia of
Integer Sequences #A093937.
Density functional theory is a widely used, approximate quantum
mechanical model electronic systems. Within DFT, one can choose
different types of functionals, generally with a trade-off between
computational complexity and accuracy. We were interested in
applying hybrid functionals, which are very accurate but very
costly, to the problem of the structure of boron at low temperature.
This problem has a rich history and, despite its apparent simplicity,
is yet unresolved. To enable the practical application of hybrid
functionals to this problem and others, we rewrote the hybrid
functional capabilities of VASP, a popular DFT code, to run on
Matt Duescher
school of robotics, I was able to contribute
using a variety of skills and knowledge
that I had acquired as a physics major. My work centered
around producing mathematical models of our cars in order to
simulate their performance and optimize their management of
the energy stores. This required me to draw heavily from my
knowledge of mechanics, but also included aspects of electricity
and magnetism and thermal physics. However, this was not all
I needed to do my job; the cars were not optimal systems like I
learned in classes, so I learned about the nonlinear behaviors
of real systems and the complexities and ambiguities of battery
physics and engineering.
One exciting consequence of my role on ChargeCar was
that the optimization helped inform design decisions on the
real prototypes. Additionally, the model was integrated into a
website that, given information about a user’s car and a GPS
recording, would estimate how an electric version of the user’s car
would perform versus a gas-powered one. All of this work also
contributed to the production of a couple of papers, including a
conference selection for IEEE this summer.
Working on ChargeCar was a nice opportunity for me, because it
allowed me to broaden my horizons as a student by working on a
research project with elements outside of my normal studies. This
project was an exciting one to be a part of as well, because it led
to real prototypes and the growth of a community surrounding the
conversion of gas-powered cars to electric. I found my efforts both
interesting and rewarding during my time on ChargeCar, and it
made for a great research experience.
Editor’s note: Matt Duescher graduated with a Bachelor of Science
in Physics in May 2011.
Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). Our GPU version runs
about an order of magnitude faster than the conventional CPU
implementation. We hope that this will enable the use of hybrid
7
U nder g raduate R e s earch
Charles Swanson
My research was with the TAUWER
My current project has focused on understanding the energetics
collaboration, who want to build a detector
of lipid membrane deformations during cellular fission and fusion
on the side of a mountain to capture
events. These events are of interest because they are vital for
tau neutrino decay products coming up
numerous cellular processes such as cell division, vesicular
through the Earth. I stayed here at CMU
trafficking, endocytosis, exocytosis and viral infection. Specifically,
for the summer of 2011 in order to work
I have been working on a method to determine the Gaussian
for Professor James Russ to evaluate the
bending modulus of lipid membranes, a quantity that has only been
hardware that was suggested for use in
measured in a very limited number of cases. Understanding this
the detector.
material parameter is important because its energetic contribution
Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are the
main revolution in the project. Compared
to photomultiplier tubes, they are smaller, less expensive, more
energy-efficient and higher-resolution. However, extraordinary
claims require extraordinary proof: in order to convince funding
committees that the SiPMs are the better option, they needed to
be extensively tested. Thus, Prof. Russ’ graduate student and I
evaluated the SiPM behavior in response to simulated particle
interactions, stimulated particle interactions and finally actual
cosmic rays.
during fission and fusion is very large. Recently, Professor
Deserno’s group proposed a highly accurate method to measure
the Gaussian modulus for single-component lipid membranes in
simulation. In order to make this method biologically relevant, my
project has been to incorporate a model for mixed membranes.
The main difficulty has been incorporating the effects of preferential
lipid adsorption at membrane open edges. I am still working on
this problem and hope to have results by the end of the academic
year. This project has been very exciting and has given me a great
opportunity to practice my skills as an independent researcher.
My personal project was an algorithm to increase time resolution
I did research with another undergraduate
of the particle interactions. The design of the particle detectors
student from May – December 2011 under
require sub-nanosecond resolution between two particle
Professor Reinhard Schumacher. We
interactions, and though the rise-time (and therefore time
explored the possibility of a correlation
resolution) of an SiPM is smaller than that of a photomultiplier,
between atmospheric conditions and
it is still on the order of ten nanoseconds. My algorithm took
surface-level cosmic ray muon flux. We
into account the entire waveform that was the output of the
worked with and expanded upon an
SiPM to better deduce the time at which the particle entered
existing Modern Physics Lab experiment
the scintillating crystal.
designed to measure muon decay times.
Professor Russ then took my algorithm to Fermilab and analyzed
some test data. My algorithm resulted in data more precise by
Greg Bernero
We incorporated barometers into the
data acquisition system in order to measure
a factor of two than that of the current timing algorithms in use.
the air pressure in the lab. We used a detector to record the muon
It is currently being used by a PET group, and Prof. Russ has
decay events, and also recorded the air pressure, temperature,
suggested I publish it.
humidity and other weather data at the time of the events. We
can bin the events in hour-intervals to further analyze and graph
the data.
After my research last summer concerning
Jason Rocks
defects in liquid crystals, I decided
I became involved in the project by emailing several
that I wanted to continue performing
professors in the department asking if they had any projects
research during the semester in the field
for undergraduates. Professor Schumacher replied, telling me
of soft condensed matter physics. I heard
about the idea. We were not funded by a grant or any other
Professor Deserno give a lecture last
source, but the department already had nearly all of the equipment
spring about theoretical biophysics and
we needed. We are currently analyzing the data we took over
decided that I wanted to learn more about
the course of the project, and there appears to be a strong anti-
this unique area of physics. I approached
correlation between the air pressure and the muon flux. We will
Professor Deserno at the beginning of
be writing a formal paper and presenting a poster in the spring.
the fall semester and was given a project
that has been both challenging and rewarding, exposing me to
areas of physics that I would not have encountered during my
undergraduate coursework.
8
Faculty Honors
Degrees Granted in 2010
2009
Doctor of Philosophy in Physics
Roy Briere and John Nagle were named Outstanding
Referees by the American Physical Society.
Kunal Ghosh received the “You Make the Difference
Award” for the second year in a row, presented by the
Carnegie Mellon Panhellenic and Interfraternity Council,
November 2009, for “dedicated efforts to students,
demonstration of superior leadership, inspiration to
others and contribution to our success as students.”
2010
Alex Evilevich received the Hagberg Prize ($28K)
from the Swedish Royal Academy of Science.
Gregg Franklin received the Carnegie Mellon University’s
Undergraduate Advising Award, and was appointed a
fellow of the American Physical Society.
Kunal Ghosh received the “You Make the Difference
Award” for the third year in a row, presented by the
Carnegie Mellon Panhellenic and Interfraternity Council,
November 2010, for “dedicated efforts to students,
demonstration of superior leadership, inspiration to
others and contribution to our success as students.”
Robert Griffiths was named an Outstanding Referee by
the American Physical Society.
Sara Majetich received the Carnegie Award for Emerging
Female Scientist.
Stephanie Tristram-Nagle received the Pittsburgh
Foundation Charles E. Kaufman Science Award ($50K).
Elisa Kay Pueschel
Measurement of the CP Violating Phase sin2betas using Bs -> J/Psi Phi Decays at CDF
Advisor: Manfred Paulini
Graduated in December 2009
John Merritt Bulava
An Improved Variance Reduction
Technique for Stochastic All-to-All
Quark Propagators in Lattice QCD
Spectrum Computations
Advisor: Colin Morningstar
Graduated in August 2009
Haijun Gong
Computational Models of Protein Sorting in the Golgi Apparatus
Advisors: Russell Schwartz,
Michael Widom
Graduated in 2009
Gabriel Alexander Altay
Cosmological Radiative Transfer
Advisor: Rupert Croft
Jason E. Galyardt
Correlations in Bottom Quark Pair Production at the Fermilab TeVatron
Advisor: James Russ
Jianjun Pan
Supramolecular Organization of Alamethicin in Fluid Lipid Membranes
Advisor: John Nagle
Doctor of Philosophy
in Physics and Master of Science
in Colloids, Polymers and Surfaces
2009
Yuli Wei
Dynamic Wetting of Viscous Newtonian and Visco-elastic Fluids
Advisors: Stephen Garoff and Lynn Walker
Master of Science in Physics
Aristotle M. Calamba
Guowei He
Mingyang Hu
William Paul Huhn
Muwen Kong
David W. Lenkner
Michelle Carla Ntampaka
Bachelor of Science
Double Degree in Computer
Science And Physics
Alonzo Javier Benavides
Bachelor of Science
Triple Degree in Computer Science
Mathematical Science and Physics
Jonathan Leonard Long
Bachelor of Science in Physics
Coleman Broaddus
Chih Yueh Chan
Benjamin Joseph Greer
Deena Jiyun Kim
Vikram Vijay Kulkarni
Anastasia Igorevna Kurnikova
Alexander Marakov
Kaitlyn H. Schwalje
Brandon W. Tarbet
Joshua Robert Tepper
Kevin Tian
Matthew J. Urffer
Graduated in August 2009
Henry Kurt Ermer
Sibel Deren Guler
Graduated in December 2009
Sean Martin Gilroy
Grant Hahn Lee
Expected August 2010
Richard Lee
Yuriy Zubovski
Bachelor of Science in Physics,
Astrophysics Track
James Alexander McGee
Bachelor of Science in Physics,
Astrophysics Track with a minor in
Biomedical Engineering
Kunting Chua
Bachelor of Science in Physics
with minor in Computer Science
David Scott Schultz
Bachelor of Science in Physics
with a minor in Mathematical
Sciences
Graduated in August 2009
Omar Emad Shams
Bachelor of Science in Physics
with a minor in Philosophy
Matthew Gregory Buchovecky
Bachelor of Science in Physics
with minor in Engineering Studies
Justin Gregory Winokur
Bachelor of Science in Physics
with an additional major in
Philosophy
Matthew Stuart Rowe
9
Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy
with an additional major in
Physics
Adam Paul Walker
Undergraduate Honors
Bachelor of Science in
Computer Science with an
additional major in Physics
and Robotics
Andrew James Yeager
Matthew Buchovecky
University Honors
Triple Degree
Bachelor of Arts in Physics
and Master of Art in Literary
and Cultural Studies and
completed a Bachelor
of Science in Business
Administration
in December 2008
Alexandra C. Beck
Double Degree
Bachelor of Science
Double Degree in Business
Administration and Physics
Corey Montella
Bachelor of Science Double
Degree in Mechanical
Engineering and Physics
Thomas J. Lambert
Bachelor of Science Double
Degree in Physics and
Mechanical Engineering
Shaun Robert Swanson
Minor in Physics
Philippe Ajoux
Jason Brubaker
Francesco Coco
Charles Cowan
Aaron Daniele
Owen Durni
Daniel Eisenberg
Benjamin Ely
Matthew Goldfarb
Bumki Kim
Manoj Kumar Kintali Venkata
Amelia Lewis
Ravi Mehta
Matthew Morrill
Bradford Neuman
Scott Ridel
Sean Sechrist
Alexander Strommen
Semen Tetruashvili
Geo Thukalil
Yue Peng Toh
Tracey Ziev
10
Alexandra Beck
Sigma Xi
Kunting Chua
University Honors
College Honors
Phi Beta Kappa
Sigma Xi
Luke Durback
University Honors
Benjamin Greer
University Honors
College Honors
Sigma Xi
ACS Scholar
Deena Kim
University Honors
College Honors
Sigma Xi
Vikram Kulkarni
University Honors
Anastasia Kurnikova
University Honors
College Honors
Sigma Xi
Thomas Lambert
University Honors
Jonathan Long
University Honors
College Honors
Phi Kappa Phi
Alexander Marakov
University Honors
Sigma Xi
James McGee
Sigma Xi
Shaun Swanson
University Honors
College Honors
Degrees Granted in 2011
Doctor of Philosophy in Physics
Tristan Bereau
Unconstrained Structure Formation in Coarse-Grained Protein Simulations
Advisor: Markus Deserno
Graduating in August 2011
Vlad Gheorghiu (Aug 2010)
Separable Operations, Graph Codes and the Location of Quantum Information
Advisor: Robert B. Griffiths
Ryan Douglas Dickson
Photoproduction of the f_1(1285)/
eta(1295) Mesons using CLAS at Jefferson Lab
Advisor: Reinhard Schumacher
Charles Robert Hogg III (Dec 2010)
Pattern Transfer from
Nanoparticle Arrays
Advisor: Sara Majetich
Shiang Yong Looi
Quantum Error Correcting Codes with Graph States and Tripartite Entanglement Structure of Graph States
Advisor: Robert B. Griffiths
Jimmy Hutasoit (Aug 2010)
Time-dependent Backgrounds in String Theory and Dualities
Advisor: Richard Holman
Shiu Fai (Frankie) Li
In situ Observation of Deformation with High Energy X-ray Diffraction Microscopy
Advisor: Robert M. Suter
Luxmi (Dec 2010)
Structural Studies of Epitaxial Graphene Formed on SiC{0001} Surfaces
Advisor: Randall Feenstra
Navodit Misra (Aug 2010)
Algorithms for Reliable Computing in Molecular Biology
Advisors: Russell Schwartz, Robert Swendsen
Kei Moriya (Dec 2010)
Measurement of the Lineshape, Differential Photoproduction Cross Section, Spin and Parity of the Lambda(1405) Using CLAS at Jefferson Lab
Advisor: Reinhard Schumacher
Brandon Tarbet
Sigma Xi
Kevin Tian
University Honors
Phi Beta Kappa
Phi Kappa Phi
Diana Marwick Seymour Parno
Measurements of the Double-Spin Asymmetry A1 on Helium-3: Toward a Precise Measurement of the Neutron A1
Advisor: Gregg Franklin
Justin Winokur
University Honors
College Honors
Peng Zheng
High Temperature Langasite Surface Acoustic Wave Sensors
Advisor: David Greve
Andrew Yeager
University Honors
Phi Beta Kappa
Phi Kappa Phi
Kevin Bandura
Pathfinder for a HI Dark Energy Survey
Advisor: Jeffrey Peterson
Master of Science in Physics
Alexander Scott Bell
Robert Haussman
Dao Ho
Yutaro Iiyama
You-Cyuan Jhang
Kevin Richard Koch
William Levine
Siddharth Maddali
Patrick Mende
Matthew Oborski
Udom Sae-Ueng
Zhen Tang
Tabitha Christine Voytek
Huizhong Xu
Ying Zhang
Bachelor of Science in Physics
with Minors in Philosophy and
Computer Science
David Andrew Bemiller
Bachelor of Science in Physics
John Joseph Briguglio
Brent Joseph Driscoll
Matthew Norman Duescher
Benjamin R. Ellison
Danielle M. Fisher
Nils Raymond Guillermin
Andrew Austin Johnson
Rebecca A. Krall
Florence Jinham Lui
Matthew D. Pocius
Gabriella Donna Shepard
Stephen Paul Sigda
Brian Patrick Tabata
Graduated August 2010
Christopher Steven Magnollay
Graduating August 2011
Mohit Raghunathan
Bachelor of Science in Physics
with an additioal major in
Philosophy
Jared Armand Delmar
Bachelor of Science in Physics
with minors in Computer
Science, Mathematical
Science and Scientific
Computing.
Maxwell Lipford Hutchinson
Bachelor of Science in Physics
with a minor in Computer
Science
Joshua Harvey Keller
Double Degree
Bachelor of Science
Double Degree in Electrical
and Computer Engineering
and Physics with a Minor in
Philosophy
Charles Francisco Delascasas
Bachelor of Science Double
Degree in Mechanical
Engineering and Physics,
Applied Track
Andrew Harrison Kojzar
Justin M. Perry
Bachelor of Science Double
Degree in Computer Science
and Physics, Computational
Physics Track
Robert Seon Wai Lee
Bachelor of Science Double
Degree in Mechanical
Engineering and Physics,
Applied Track with a Minor in
Philosophy
Sean Daniel Lubner
Bachelor of Science Double
Degree in Material Science and
Engineering and Physics
Anthony D. Rice
Bachelor of Science and Arts
in Physics and Drama
Ariel Rachel Rosenburg
Bachelor of Science and Arts
in Physics and Music
Peter Ross
Bachelor of Science and Arts
in Physics
Andrew Jay Wesson
Minors in Physics
Jacualyn Carol Dudder
Noah Harp
Taylor Mead Hopper
Steven Si Lu
David James Marino
Anthony Maurice
Javier Novales
Frank Anthony Perry
Tell us about yourself!
Here is my news:
Peter Sharp Ralli
Nicholas Daniel Sainz
Benjamin Beyer Segall
Michael John Sullivan
Joshua Adam Taylor
Peter Adam Trocha
Eric Lee Turner
Joshua Van Dyke Watzman
Undergraduate Honors
David A. Bemiller
University Honors
Andrew H. Kojzar
University Honors
CIT Research Honors
Rebecca A. Krall
University Honors
MCS College Honors
Phi Kappa Phi
Phi Beta Kappa
Robert S.W. Lee
MCS College Honors
John J. Briguglio
University Honors
Sean D. Lubner
University Honors
CIT Research Honors
Charles F. Delascasas
University Honors
Phi Beta Kappa
Justin M. Perry
University Honors
Phi Beta Kappa
Benjamin R. Ellison
University Honors
MCS College Honors
Phi Beta Kappa
Anthony D. Rice
University Honors
CIT Research Honors
Peter D. Ross
University Honors
Danielle M. Fisher
University Honors
Stephen P. Sigda
University Honors
Maxwell L. Hutchinson
University Honors
MCS College Honors
Phi Beta Kappa
Phi Kappa Phi
Andrew J. Wesson
University Honors
MCS College Honors
Andrew A. Johnson
MCS College Honors
Andrew Carnegie Society Scholar
Joshua H. Keller
University Honors
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Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
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INTER ACTIONS
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Randall Feenstra
Gregg Franklin
Michael Widom
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